Bug 12425

Summary:	Add 64bit interface for netlink counters
Product:	Networking	Reporter:	Norman Rasmussen (norman)
Component:	Other	Assignee:	Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo (acme)
Status:	CLOSED INVALID
Severity:	normal	CC:	alan
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	2.6.26	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:

Description Norman Rasmussen 2009-01-11 03:06:28 UTC

This is more of a feature request tracker, than a bug, but here we go:

Problem Description:

Currently the netlink statistics are limited to 32bit, but there have been varied requests over the last few years to add a 64bit interface for statistics.

Additionally it would be useful if the 64bit counters would work correctly on both 32bit kernels (with magic locking required to make the double 32bit value increment safely), and 64bit kernels (easy).

refs:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=199054
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=487543
http://marc.info/?l=linux-netdev&m=118415534518953
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-netdev/2008/2/13/844984/thread

Steps to reproduce:

Transfer more than 4gb on a 32bit machine.  Observe that ifconfig, iproute2 and pppstats show interface stats as < 4gb.

(note that the netfilter team already have 64bit counters on their rules, so this is not impractical)